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2
After a couple of years of studying Dark Creatures, subsisting on meager scholarships, he looks sicklier than at Hogwarts. Without chance for employment, he can as well study art. After all, we never know how much time we have left, so he’s dying to learn how to better record the life around him.
His friends are used to his constant sketching, and they force him to accept pads of proper aquarelle paper as gifts. He surprises them with accurate images of what he’s stored in incredible visual memory.
“Painting compensates for the threat of losing my human mind,” he says.
3
Finally I’m reaching the higher level: real portraits. This new skill is overwhelming. I can control it only when the connection is intense. My first model can’t be anyone else.
Every pose of his is safe in my mind, thanks to my visual memory, which the professors have assessed as exceptional… rather uncanny. When he’s gone and he hasn’t bothered to tell me when he’ll be back, I console myself with countless sketches.
However, the magic of movement requires his presence. And when he agrees to stay near – as man or dog – he overwhelms me, and I forget to paint.
4
Tonight he must be too much tempted to pretend the golden carefree days are back. The teasing smack on my neck turns into a caress.
He’s caught me playing with tints of yellow and red. The illusion of warmth I’ve reached is shattered momentarily when he opens the door to the balcony and steps out. But he settles to smoke in front of the birch, which still glows like a torch in the chill of the fading evening.
If his face stays long enough in the middle of my landscape, perhaps I’ll manage to touch him, catching his moving image.